Local judge may have been target of hit

By Craig Kapitan :
March 11, 2013

For several days last month, a security detail surrounded state District Judge Angus McGinty and his family after authorities were tipped by a confidential informant that an inmate already in jail for murder had hired a hit man to hunt him down.

The alleged assassin-for-hire is now jailed in an unrelated case, although neither he nor the inmate suspected of hatching the plot has been charged with any crime associated with the case, McGinty said Monday in his first public statements about the incident.

“As soon as we learned of the threat to Judge McGinty, we took immediate action,” Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesman Paul Berry said of the threat, which surfaced Feb. 6 — just days after North Texas prosecutor Mark Hasse was gunned down.

The judge said he believes he made an enemy of murder defendant Jeffery Brian Spaulding, 40, after ordering him held without bail upon finding that he had removed a ceiling tile from a courthouse holding cell — possibly to crawl into the ceiling space or to attack a bailiff.

“While he was in the jail he asked another inmate, if he helped him get out of jail would he kill me?” McGinty said, relating what the informant reportedly told authorities. “That guy evidently agreed.”

Spaulding appears to have paid $2,000 to bail the second man out of jail. But in the month that man was free before authorities were tipped off, he apparently engaged in no scheme associated with the plan, officials said.

“After about one day of investigating his phone and emails, they determined he wasn't going to do it,” McGinty said, speculating that the alleged hit man might have strung Spaulding along to get out of jail for free. “He just hung out with his girlfriend and waited for his own court date.”

Nevertheless, accepting the money could be enough to charge a person with a conspiracy, McGinty said.

He said both men have denied involvement.

Posters were put up at the courthouse and a 24-hour security detail followed McGinty for three days last month before the alleged hit man, 35, was arrested on a separate charge.

Citing safety concerns for the judge, Sheriff Susan Pamerleau asked the San Antonio Express-News last month to delay reporting the incident.